The Disom Guru
On 4 August 2025, Shibu Soren, founder of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and the man millions of his followers called "Disom Guru," died at 81. This week, on his first death anniversary, Jharkhand unveiled a statue of him at Nemra, his native village, with Chief Minister Hemant Soren, his son, presiding. This piece looks at his life through Max Weber's idea of charismatic authority, and at a genuine, uncomfortable pattern in how India's mainstream media remembers subaltern political figures: through their scandals far more readily than through their substance. Building a Movement from the Ground Up Shibu Soren was not born into political inheritance. He emerged in the early 1970s as an organiser among Santhal peasants and mine workers in what was then southern Bihar, building the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha from 1972 onward as the political vehicle for a demand few in Delhi initially took seriously: a separate state carved from Bihar's tribal-majority districts, run by and...